Category Archives: Mars Colony

Introduction

The year 1985 contained so many cultural touchstones: Queens legendary Live Aid performance, Coca-Colas infamous New Coke release, the first-ever WrestleMania, and much more. Likely the most crucial moment to readers of Game Informer was the debut of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

The NES pulled the burgeoning industry out of the video game crash and introduced countless iconic characters and franchises. It seemed like every hit property received a game at the time. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Top Gun, DuckTales, Dungeons & Dragons, American Gladiators: the list goes on and on. However, one iconic brand shockingly never made the transition into a NES game.

Garbage Pail Kids, which also debuted in 1985, was a trading card series that mixed the cuteness of the hit Cabbage Patch Kids dolls with outrageous, funny, and compelling grossness. The images featured kids barfing, losing limbs, and getting zapped by lightning, to name a few. Word of mouth spread on playgrounds like wildfire, and teachers and parents were quick to ban and condemn them. Naturally, this made GPK wildly popular.

The cards were such a hit that creator Topps produced 15 series in the span of three years. They licensed GPK out for toys, school notebooks and folders, inflatable punching bags, you name it. This kind of white-hot success would normally lead to an NES game as the logical next step, but several factors would get in the way.

A universally reviled live-action movie disappointed the kids who were allowed to see it. A threatened boycott got CBS to shelve a GPK Saturday morning cartoon that it had already fully produced. Most damaging of all, Topps had to settle with the makers of Cabbage Patch Kids for millions of dollars plus royalties and alter the design of GPK to be less like CPKs dolls. Sales dwindled, and GPK was officially dead by the end of 1988.

After a long hiatus, Topps launched GPKs All New Series in 2003 (new GPK series continue to this day) during the era of PlayStation 2. The opportunity to create a GPK game on the classic NES console that shared its cultural heyday was seemingly lost forever.

Playable Characters

The titular character, Mike uses a sword and axe for melee attacks

Hes gonna puke! Lukes downward-firing barf takes care of enemies on lower platforms

Lindsays horizontal snot rockets provide much-needed ranged attacks

Think of her as the Luigi of the group. Higher jumps and head stomps play more like a Mario Bros. game

Lifting the Lid

Tim Hartman and Greg Caldwell have been best friends since the third grade. They connected over a shared love of NES games, Garbage Pail Kids, and many other 80s cultural touchstones. In their adult lives, they found themselves longing for an era of game that just wasnt made anymore.

They found a homebrew community where people were making new NES games in the same style and limitations of the original hardware. It wasnt long before they wanted in. But they had to do it right.

For us, the cartridge comes first, Caldwell says. This is where we got our start in game dev. We had never made a game before we made an NES game. That's always been paramount for us.

The friends pulled together a small team under the name Retrotainment to create Haunted: Halloween 85, a spooky action platformer, and worked with Infinite NES Lives to produce custom NES cart shells, boards, boxes, and manuals. The 2015 release was followed in the subsequent year by Haunted: Halloween 86. (Both games were later released on digital platforms to reach a wider audience.)

This custom art was made exclusively for Game Informer by famed Garbage Pail Kids artist Joe Simko. He also created the official box art

While showing the games off at retro conventions, they caught the eye of art, music, and gaming collectible producers iam8bit. Retrotainment and Infinite NES Lives would go on to manufacture several NES, Super Nintendo, and Sega Genesis cart reissues for iam8bit, including classics like Street Fighter II, Mega Man 2, and Disneys Aladdin.

As they were working on all of these retro releases, they started thinking of all their favorite childhood things that never got the NES treatment. At the top of the list was Garbage Pail Kids. We were trying to right a wrong, Hartman says. It's the game that [GPK has] long deserved to have.

Hartman managed to work his way through contacts at licensor Topps and eventually convinced the executives to give them a shot. Retrotainment brought this up with partners iam8bit, which recently announced it was getting into game publishing. The company was immediately onboard.

When Garbage Pail Kids came up in conversation, it felt so great to all of us, says iam8bit co-owner Jon Gibson. [It was like] yeah, why wasn't there a game?

Adam F. Goldberg

The creator of hit show The Goldbergs, Adam F. Goldberg, is a huge Garbage Pail Kids fan. He produced the documentary 30 Years of Garbage: The Garbage Pail Kids Story, wrote the short film Garbage Pail Kids in Mad Mike: Fury Load, and worked on the story for Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum with the game creators.

My longtime dream has always been to create a GPK animated series, but my TV company is, unfortunately, at ABC, which prohibits me from working outside of Disney. However, I am allowed to write short films. Joe Simkos brilliant Garbage Pail Krashers vehicles were the perfect inspiration for me to create a Mad Max parody.

I grew up loving two things above all else my GPK collection and my Nintendo. Back then, there were rumors that GPK was going to be an NES game, Saturday morning cartoon, and a movie. The Nintendo game never came to be. It blows my mind that after 35 years, we will finally get the 8-bit GPK adventure we were promised!

I had a blast collaborating with Retrotainment and iam8bit at the early writing stages. They truly did a brilliant job using Mad Mike: Fury Load as the framework for the game but made it more epic than I ever expected. Its a bucket list item for my name to scroll at the end credits 8-bit style!

Garbage Pail Gameplay

Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum begins directly after the events of GPK Mad Mike: Fury Load, a series of shorts written by Adam F. Goldberg (see sidebar above) set in a post-apocalyptic world. The titular character saved the day, and now all he wants is his favorite stale gum. Unfortunately, the factory run by Brainy Janie only makes fresh gum, so hell have to travel through time and space with his three friends on a high-tech toilet to collect the ingredients to make it properly stale.

Mad Mike and his friends all have different abilities (see sidebar above), and players can hot-swap between them to take advantage of their skills. The games six different levels feature adventures in the Stone Age, 80s Tokyo, a future Mars colony, and more, and can be completed in any order.

Fill up the TRASH meter in the upper left of the screen to activate temporary invincibility

Every enemy, boss, and NPC in the game is based on a real GPK card, all of which you can view in the bonus gallery in high resolution. Card collecting and trading is a key component, as some have powers like stunning enemies or granting temporary flight. If you track down all 39, you get a special surprise.

Minigames include fishing for items out of a porta-potty and flying around dangerous obstacles as Buggy Betty. The GPK's irreverent, gross-out attitude runs through every element of the game.

Multiple difficulty options help players overcome the NES hard gameplay, and retro collection masters Digital Eclipse is on board to provide its signature rewind, save states, watch mode, video filter effects, bonus gallery content, and much more in the digital download versions of the game.

Its clear Retrotainment is pouring decades of pent-up ideas for a GPK NES game into this project and that it hopes old-school fans and new players alike will find something to love.

There are so many characters, so many opportunities for that brand to shine, Tim Hartman says. Were very honored to be a part of it and the history that is the Garbage Pail Kids.

Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum comes to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC on October 25. The title will also (finally) arrive on NES via a special cartridge release sometime in the first quarter of 2023.

Documentary Trailer

This article originally appeared in Issue 350 of Game Informer.

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Exclusive First Preview Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike And The Quest For Stale Gum - Game Informer

If anyone was ever going to get us caught in an endlessly repeating time loop of news, of course it would be Elon Musk. He created PayPal, made electric vehicles profitable, put people into space, and is planning a Mars colony as we speak. Why wouldn't he be the one to bend spacetime in such a way that we're constantly living the same recycled story? Which is, naturally, all about him. He's figured out a way to make current events recurrent.

It begins with a dramatic announcement he's all in on buying Twitter in order to restore the noble principle of free expression to the new public square:

That leads to a widespread freakout by his future employees whose idea of free speech is, to put it kindly, more limited than Musk's. Or to put it unkindly, they realize it's a lot easier to suppress, shadow ban, or straight up de-platform opinions that they don't agree with, rather than engage in healthy debate and disprove those opinions through logic, reason, and demonstrable facts backed up by evidence. Which means they get to decide that Brandi Love can post photoshopped photos that make it look like Tom Brady has his D in her V (link SFWish), but citing verified data about Myocarditis in kids the way Alex Berenson did will put you in the virtual time out chair.

And that, predictably, is the part of this news cycle we've been in all week:

Daily Mail - On Tuesday, [Musk] shocked Silicon Valley by offering to complete the buyout at his original offer price of $44 billion.

Employees were taken aback.

'Living the plot of Succession is f***ing exhausting,' said Rumman Chowdhury, the director of the META (ML Ethics, Transparency and Accountability) team on Twitter.

She added: 'I am sitting on 2023 company-wide strategy readouts and I guess we are going to collectively ignore what's going on.'

Parker Lyons, a senior financial analyst at Twitter, tweeted a series of memes, including a young girl crying captioned: 'writing my little emails today'.

He also tweeted a cartoon of someone attempting '2023 planning' and being told: 'This is worthless.'

One image featured a mock-up of Mark Zuckerberg as a priest welcoming newcomers to his flock, captioned: 'Meta recruiters for the next 48 hours'.

Another staffer, EJ Samson, tweeted a clip of a Balenciaga model angrily marching through a catwalk covered in mud.

'I encourage every Twitter employee to go outside and take a walk,' he wrote.

Some workers were venting their frustrations on the chat forum Blind, CNN reported.

'Cue the layoffs,' one anonymous staffer reportedly wrote.

If you've got even the slightest appreciation for irony, you have to admire the sheer lack of self-awareness it takes for someone who is all about policing free expression using the very platform they work for to take a dump on their new boss. I mean, imagine what their reaction would be if Musk made it a rule that you'll get banned if you go on Twitter and criticize him? They'd scream bloody murder. But he presumably no problem with it. He just wants (again, presumably) to make it so you can criticize anyone you want because it's your right. While they want to protect certain people. Just not the guy who'll be paying their salary very soon. It would be like a Barstool writer doing a hit piece on Chernin just before they took over the company and expecting to just keep working here. It's Bananaland. But we've seen this movie before.

Which brings us to the next phase of this news Ouroborus eating its own tail:

More Daily Mail - Elon Musk's deposition was delayed on Thursday as he and Twitter executives continue to negotiate the terms of his $44 billion takeover.

Among the many issues they are said to be discussing is whether the Tesla CEO will try to make the deal contingent on his original $12.5 billion debt-financing package, as banks try to weasel their way out of the agreement.

The banks could argue that Musk's antics in delaying the agreement have sufficiently damaged Twitter, enough to qualify as a material adverse effect, letting them walk away, the New York Times reports.

And Musk could even foil his own deal by refusing to sign a letter certifying Twitter is solvent, though the judge in the case is likely to force the billionaire to sue the banks for the agreed-upon money under the New York law that governs them.

Twitter executives, on the other hand, are trying to make sure Musk won't back out of his agreement again, seeking a reaffirmation of the specifics in the previously-agreed-to contract.

And here we are, back where we started. Musk wanted the company, but they didn't want him. Then he didn't want it, but they did. All the while the workers consistently don't want him, but he wants to be the one who sends them scurrying away from his employ. Which I think makes this the second or third (fourth?) go-round of this neverending cycle. It's "Twitter, I've come to bargain!" "You've come to die!"

The question now is how many more times we go through the fill-wash-rinse-spin cycle before this finally gets done. And how long the mating ritual will go on so we can finally get the totally wild, unfettered shit show that Twitter was through the first few years of our existence. And also? Whether anyone will still be working there by the time Musk finally gets this thing done.

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Twitter Employees are SHOOK Once Again About Elon Musk's Takeover, Even as the Deal Might Still Fall Through - Barstool Sports

Astronauts bodies suffer greatly in microgravity, which is unfortunate given humanitys aspirations to colonize space. However, artificial gravity can help alleviate some health issues, as demonstrated by aNASAexperiment using fruit flies aboard the International Space Station.

Fruit flies were the earliest living organisms ever put into orbit when they were launched aboard a V2 rocket on February 20, 1947. Fruit flies are model organisms to study the health effects of space flights, including changes in gravity, radiation, and other changes. We know that fruit flies share 75% of human disease-causing genes, and there is also a significant overlap between cellular and molecular processes between humans and flies. So scientists can investigate how a space environment might impact human health by learning more about fruit flies.

Dr. Siddhita Mhatre, a senior scientist at NASAs Ames Research Center, California, said: It is imperative that we understand the impacts of altered gravity on the neurological function. And flies in space, alongside the astronauts, will help to further our efforts in keeping astronauts healthy.

Humans and all life on Earth have evolved to survive under the conditions our planet offers, with gravity playing a significant role. For example, our muscles and bones retain minimal strength by constantly defying gravity, and our circulatory, digestive, and central neurological systems depend on naturally flowing fluids moving downward.

Therefore, humans biology is negatively impacted when they are removed from that environment. Many side effects of space travel have been documented, including puffy faces, blurred eyesight, heart weakness, muscle mass, and bone loss. Because of this, astronauts have to exercise intensely for hours every day throughout their time in outer space, and their health still declines even when they return to Earth.

With astronauts slated to return to the Moon by 2024 and prospects of landing on Mars in the future, finding solutions to reduce the effects of microgravity is becoming increasingly crucial. One of the critical questions is whether artificial gravity can lessen the impacts, which NASA has recently looked into using fruit flies.

The flies were sent to the International Space Station (ISS), where they were tested in a device that could keep flies under varying gravity levels. One group of fruit flies experienced low-Earth orbital microgravity, while the other was exposed to artificial gravity created by spinning an enclosure in a centrifuge. A third group remained on Earth, serving as a control.

After spending three weeks in space, the fruit flies were brought back to Earth and thoroughly researched, including their behavior, cellular alterations in their brains, gene expression, and how they aged after arriving.

Both colonies of space-traveling flies displayed metabolic alterations, oxidative stress in their cells, and detrimental neurological effects. On the other hand, those maintained under artificial gravity appeared to be protected against several neurological alterations, such as neuron loss, changes in the number of glial cells, cell death, and oxidative damage.

The microgravity flies also experienced difficulty readjusting to gravity after landing on Earth. As a result, they aged more quickly than the other groups and fared worse on a climbing test. The researchers point out that although flies and humans are highly different species, this experiment implies that using artificial gravity can aid astronauts with potential health issues brought on by microgravity. This could be combined with specialized centrifuges or spacesuits that simulate gravity to make exercise in space more similar to exercising on Earth.

Dr. Janani Iyer, a study author, explained:

Microgravity poses risks to the central nervous system, suggesting that countermeasures may be needed for long-duration space travel. As we venture back to the Moon and on to Mars, reducing the harmful effects of microgravity will be key to keeping future explorers safe. This study is a step in the right direction to explore the protective effects of artificial gravity in space and to understand the adaptation to Earth conditions after returning from space.

The studyArtificial gravity partially protects space-induced neurological deficits in Drosophila melanogasterwas published inCell Reportson September 6, 2022.

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Artificial Gravity Lowers Spaceflight's Health Toll on Fruit Flies - Intelligent Living

Under the weight of the pandemic lockdowns, food security experts Lenore Newman and Evan Fraser embarked on a thought experiment. Using their research of innovations on earth, they decided to figure out what it would take to feed a human colony on Mars in the year 2080.

Both Fraser and Newman took inspiration from what's already been developed here on planet earth to envision their Martian colony. From greenhouse technologies to nanotechnologies, they foresee the possibility of a sensible, tasty and well-balanced diet on Mars including fine cheeses, scotch and sashimi.

Newman and Fraser are co-authors of Dinner on Mars: The Technologies that will feed the Red Planet and Transform Agriculture on Earth. They spoke to IDEAS hostNahlah Ayed about the lessons they learned on how to improve our battered food systems on Earth.

Here is an excerpt from their conversation.

What is it that inspired this whole dinner on Mars thought experiment in the first place?

EF: Well, it was March 20th or so, 2020. And I was like everybody else on the planeta mixture of anxious, scared, bored and terrified about this yawning gap that opened up in front of me.

As I recall, Lenore, I started texting you and [said], 'I think interesting things are happening, but I'm really bored and I'm scared. What do you think?' And one text every other day led to 30 or 40 texts an hour, and led to a conversation that was essentially, 'well, we can't travel anywhere physically, but maybe there's somewhere we can go to in our imagination.'

This was at the point where Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos were blasting off in their rockets and so everyone was talking about space exploration. We thought maybe we should just imagine a silly imagining: what would a dinner be like if we ever made it to Mars?

At some point, after about six weeks of this, we realized this wasn't a silly exercise anymore. It was deadly serious because we were talking about real science, real issues. And then we were starting to apply the lessons that we were imagining being played out on Mars. We started imagining how they might transform food systems here on Earth. And this is where things got really both exciting and serious in that we are not only imagining how we will sustain a new generation of exploration outside of this, the planet that we call home, but also how we need to change how we eat here on Earth.

Evan, if you don't mind, paint a picture of how inefficient the global system is now for creating food.

EF: So right now, we've got a very paradoxical situation at the level of food security. We have this weird world where both the number of hungry and the number of obese people are rising on the planet. So that's a crazy statistic in and of itself.

And then there's the environmental costs at a global level of our food system. Food is the number one driver in our losing fight to protect biodiversity. Food is the world's largest user of freshwater and the largest source of water pollution. Food creates our agri-food systems, creates about a third of the world greenhouse gases, and we waste about a third of the world's foodSo you add all those things up together and you think there has to be a more efficient way of doing these things. And it's that sort of feeling of what could the alternative be? That led Lenore and I to think, 'well, maybe if we imagined a food system on Mars, we will unlock some solutions for here on Earth.'

So I'm sold on the idea. I'm imagining the scene that you're creating, but logistically, how is it even possible, Evan? Describe to me the conditions on Mars that you'd have to contend with in setting up this Martian colony?

EF:Well, I mean, it's going to be really hard to feed a community on Mars, there's no question at all. On one hand, you have virtually no water, and what little water is, it is frozen into the regolith that's a fancy word for essentially Martian dirt. It's kind of like permafrost doesn't have a direct analogy but let's imagine there's some water crystals frozen in the soil.

There's carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There's way too much solar radiation, but not enough solar energy because Mars is a lot farther from the sun than Earth, so there's less warmth there. So it gets really cold and you don't have what's called heat units that plants need to flourish. But you've got punishing solar radiation because it doesn't really have a strong atmosphere that gets rid of the radiation. So you've got these wild swings in temperatures. It's generally too cold. You've got no organic matter at all. You've got very little water and too much radiation, but not enough solar energy. It's a bit of a disaster.

But you do have things like carbon dioxide and other basic building blocks of life. And so I think when you start imagining life on Mars, you start with some sort of algae or cyanobacteria that can eat that regolith, absorb some carbon dioxide andin doing so, it will produce organic matter and oxygen. And if you can start that process going in some sort of tank and scientists on Earth have simulated Martian conditions and have got cyanobacterias that will eat and flourish under those conditions, well, then you've got the basic ingredients on which you can build something more elaborate.

Lenore, how bad are things if we have to contemplate what might happen on Mars to figure out how bad things are here at home?

LN: One of the surprises of the pandemic and one of the not-so-wonderful surprises was how severe the food problems became and how quickly they did, and that basically the world food system went into crisis and has remained in crisis ever since.And certainly there's been a lot driving that:the pandemic, ongoing and worsening climate change and then, of course, war and political discontent. And what those of us infood and agriculture have realized is we've probably left the era where food was easy with "easy" in quotation marks. But there were definitely 50 years where food got cheaper and cheaper and easier and easier to procure to the point that a lot of people on Earth didn't have to think about it very hard.

I think one of the catalysts for this for me was Elon Musk and his discussion of a city on Mars kind of brushed aside the food. Evan and I knew that it was actually a big question because you can't send food to Mars. It's simply too far. You can't get takeout.

We started to realize, thought, that the Earth is becoming a lot more like Mars in some ways, in that our own system of takeout in the middle of winter, for example, is breaking down. And as we did this exercise, we realized solving these problems for an environment where you have no cushion, where there is no natural world per say to give youa hand. You actually start to solve these problems on Earth as well. And that became the driving theme of the book was a lot of the changes you need to make to make food work on Mars actually would really help us out here on Earth as well.

Lenore, I understand you take some inspiration from a massive greenhouse complex in England called the Eden Project. Can you tell me about that?

LN: So I went down a very deep rabbit hole about greenhouses. Because the truth is, we don't entirely just farm outside on earth, we create little environments for our plants. And there have been a few very large experiments to try and bring entire ecosystems indoors for various reasons, for pleasure or for scientific experimentation. And one of the ones that inspired me is this series of domes in the south of England called the Eden Project that encloses a series of biomes in an old mining pit.

LN: It's mostly for educational purposes. It's not a true closed system because they do bring in water and air and such but it does serve to show that one can create these little communities of plants that support each other indoors.And we've seen that in the Victorian era. It was very popular to create these kind of pleasure domes full of plants and right back into history people have been obsessed with growing plants out of their own ranges and that often requires greenhouses.

Guests in this episode (in order of appearance):

Lenore Newman is director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley and Canada Research Chair for Food Security and Environment.

Evan Fraser is director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph.

David Harland ischief global growth officer at the Eden Project.

Bjrn rvar is co-founder and CSO at ORF Genetics in Iceland.

Cher Mereweather is CEO at Anthesis Provision in Guelph, Ontario.

*Q&A edited for clairty and length. This episode was produced by Nicola Luksic.

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Dinner on Mars: How to grow food when humans colonize the red planet - CBC.ca

Some of the wealthiest people on the planet have been highly invested in colonizing space. However, traveling to space can cause more harm than good in the long run.

Some of the wealthiest people on the planet including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson have been highly invested in visiting, exploring, and colonizing space. Elon Musk has even announced plans to start a colony on Mars, and some people have theorized that living in space will be a way to literally escape the climate crisis. However, traveling to space can cause more harm than good in the long run and living on other worlds is a drastic solution that shouldnt be selected when our planet is still salvageable.

As 24.7 million square miles of land face the risk of biodiversity loss and younger generations rally for a more sustainable world, people are recognizing that our global resources need to be directed toward alleviating climate change on Earth. Heres why the space race isnt the answer to the climate crisis.

When you think of a rocket launch, you can probably envision the plumes of white smoke filling the air beneath the spacecraft. This smoke is created by millions of gallons of water vapor although spacecraft consume many more natural resources and non-sustainable materials beyond that.

Reaching space even one time can make the climate crisis worse. In fact, one rocket launch can release 300 tons of carbon dioxide and cause it to stay in our upper atmosphere for years.

Granted that space travel is destroying our planet in hopes of living in or taking from another, its an unethical practice that shouldnt continue. Many corporations that are partaking in space travel, such as Virgin Galactic and SpaceX, know this, and have yet to report their carbon emissions online both those that are emitted in the production of rockets and the carbon that is released during launching. However, Blue Origins new rocket solely relies on hydrogen and oxygen.

While finding a way to live in space is an exciting solution to the climate, its not the most resource-efficient one. Its not uncommon for organizations to spend billions of dollars to study space and develop technologies for reaching other worlds. At the same time, were only inching toward the ultimate goals of colonization and using material resources from space. NASA, in particular, spent 23.3 billion dollars in 2021, and although a portion of this budget is dedicated towards environmental restoration projects and educating the public about climate change related issues, only 2 billion dollars were actually contributed to those projects.

On the other hand, monetary investments can create a large, measurable, and relatively quick impact on our planet. For example, if corporate leaders make large-scale investments in renewable energy, they can drastically reduce their carbon emissions. The money currently spent on space travel can feasibly be used for the rehabilitation of polluted water supplies, the conservation of natural ecosystems, and many other important green initiatives.

Space travel isnt possible without a healthy Earth. While many space lovers and scientists romanticize the idea of living in colonies on other worlds, the fact is that its unlikely to happen in our lifetimes. Mars, for example, was theorized as a potential candidate for a future for human colonization. However, with further investigation, NASA is still indecisive about that theory due to a variety of factors, including the fact that Mars is vastly colder than Earth and has less oxygen.

In addition, when humans venture off-planet, theyre still dependent on food and supplies from Earth and often staff members who remain grounded throughout their trip. If we prioritize space travel before solving our climate crisis, our planet and resources may be irreparably damaged long before we figure out how to move to space. This would leave our global citizens without the resources needed to reach space, and with no alternate solutions.

Leaving Earth behind isnt just impossible at the moment. Its also irresponsible. If we cant protect our own planet from climate change which is largely caused by human activity theres no telling if we can adequately protect a new planet at all.

Theres a reason billionaires are among the only people visiting space. Leaving our planet is incredibly costly, which means it doesnt help the impoverished communities that are most affected by climate change.

While the worlds wealthiest individuals can easily escape the negative effects of the climate crisis at any time whether they stay on Earth or launch to space poor communities cant easily migrate at the first sign of trouble. Wildfires and flash floods, for instance, can be disastrous and take over a decade to recover from.

If we invest in space exploration as a solution, were prioritizing novelty over the immediate needs of actual people on our planet.

Even if colonization becomes something were capable of, people simply arent built to live in space. After millions of years of evolution, human beings are physically and emotionally linked to the Earth. Without our home planet and specifically, a healthy version of it people will suffer major consequences to their health.

When people spend extended periods of time in space, they experience a variety of detrimental effects on their physical bodies. For instance, the optic nerve, which allows our brain to process the information from our eyes and see properly, swells and becomes damaged in space. This causes a disorder called spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome. NASA also reports increased risk of degenerative diseases and cancer for astronauts, which makes large-scale space colonization worrisome.

Humans are also mentally hardwired to live on Earth. In fact, our brains and bodies can suffer if we do not get enough nature in our daily lives. On the flip side, a number of studies have demonstrated that spending time outside and interacting with the wider world can serve as a treatment for anxiety and depression and leaving for other worlds eliminates the relaxing, lush landscape were used to on Earth.

While humans can certainly evolve, itll take many years of detrimental effects before people can fully adapt.

Getting to space is an attractive solution to the climate crisis that some billionaires and space enthusiasts have become proponents of in recent years. However, its far from an adequate solution to our worsening environment here on Earth and its a completely unethical choice.

Many space explorers may think theyre doing the best for humanity space exploration does provide data and solutions for problems here on Earth but they could take a lesson from effective altruism, which states that one must make choices that benefit the world the most. And unfortunately, space travel is something that doesnt benefit everyone.

Scientists spend millions of dollars to reach new planets, which leads to a lot of carbon emissions and only a little extra knowledge. This money could easily be invested into impactful green initiatives here on our planet, where it could make a measurable difference and potentially reverse the damage caused by climate change for good.

Plus, whereas the space race leaves impoverished communities behind and worsens human health, focusing on bettering our planet is beneficial for all.

Instead of prioritizing a solution thats still far-fetched, its important to first preserve our planet. Only when our planet is preserved should we consider traveling to and living on new ones.

Image Source: Unsplash

Read more from the original source:

Why the Space Race Isn't the Answer to the Climate Crisis - Green Queen Media

Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum is coming to consoles and PC in a few weeks, and will receive an NES release as well, courtesy of publisher iam8bit and developer Retrotainment are behind the new title.

Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum takes place after the events of GPK Mad Mike: Fury Load, a series of shorts written by Adam F. Goldberg set in a post-apocalyptic world. Mad Mike wants his favourite stale gum, but the factory run by Brainy Janie only makes fresh gum, prompting an adventure in which Mad Mike will travel through time and space with his friends on a high-tech toilet to collect the ingredients to make it stale. The charactersMad Mike, Luke Puke, Leaky Lindsay, and Patty Putty are all playable and can be used at any time, each character having unique abilities with six different levels that can be tackled in any order.

Players will visit the Stone Age, 80s Tokyo, a future Mars colony, and more, as well as collect cards and trade them, some of which have powers such as stunning enemies or granting temporary flight. A number of mini-games are included such as flying around dangerous obstacles as Buggy Betty. In addition, there will be difficulty options plus rewind, save states, watch mode, video filter effects, bonus gallery content, and more courtesy of Digital Eclipse.

Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum is due out for Switch, PC, Xbox and PlayStation on October 25, 2022, with a special NES cartridge version shipping in Q1 2023.

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Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike And The Quest For Stale Gum coming to consoles and PC as well as the NES - Real Otaku Gamer

NASA is looking into an odd mystery object attached to their special Mars chopper.

Experts noticed something peculiar stuck to Ingenuity, the space agency's helicopter used to search for signs of life on the Red Planet.

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The debris was spotted just as the bot successfully carried out its 33rd flight.

Nasa official calls such things foreign object debris (FOD).

The flappy thing eventually fell off and landed back on the martian surface.

"This FOD was not visible in Navcam footage from the previous flight (32)," Nasa said.

"The FOD is seen in Flight 33 Navcam imagery from the earliest frames to approximately halfway through the video, when it fell from the leg anddrifted back to the Marssurface.

"All telemetry from the flight and a post-flight search and transfer are nominal and show no indication of vehicle damage.

"The Ingenuity and Perseverance Mars 2020 teams are working to discern the source of the debris."

Nasa's robots on Mars stumble on quite a bit from time to time.

Usually it ends up being debris from past missions.

Manmade objects are scattered across the surface of Mars from decades of exploration dating back to the first crash landing on the red planet in 1971.

Over the summer, Nasa found a spaghetti-like substance.

It turned out to be netting from a mission in February 2021, when Ingenuity and its rover companion on the ground Perseverance arrived to Mars.

The rover has also previously caught a glimpse of its ownthermal blanketwedged in the jaws of a dinosaur-shaped rock.

2

Perseverance - What's on board?

Perseverance boasts a total of 19 cameras and two microphones, and carries seven scientific instruments.

An X-ray ray gun that will help scientists investigate the composition of Martian rock.

2. Radar Imager for Mars' subsurface experiment (RIMFAX)

A ground-penetrating radar that will image buried rocks, meteorites, and even possible underground water sources up to a depth of 10 metres (33ft).

3. Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA)

A bunch of sensors that will take readings of temperature, wind speed and direction, pressure, and other atmospheric conditions.

4. Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE)

An experiment that will convert Martian carbon dioxide into oxygen. A scaled-up version could be used in future to provide Martian colonists with breathable air.

5. SuperCam

A suite of instruments for measuring the makeup of rocks and regolith at a distance

6. Mastcam-Z

A camera system capable of taking 3D images by combining two or more photos into one.

7. Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC)

From Baker Street to Mars: Sherloc contains an ultraviolet laser that will investigate Martian rock for organic compounds.

Find out more about science

Want to know more about the weird and wonderful world of science? From the Moon to the human body, we have you covered...

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Nasa investigating mystery object that has attached itself to Mars helicopter... - The US Sun

Famous faces at Heartland International Film Festival

Hollywood stars visit Indianapolis to participate in the Heartland International Film Festival, which debuted in 1992.

David Lindquist/IndyStar, David Lindquist/IndyStar

Heartland International Film Festival will bring more than 115 independent and award-caliber studio films to Indianapolis over the next 11 days.

From the minimalist Indianapolis love letter "It Happened One Weekend" to Best Picture favorite "The Whale," Heartland's 31st festival will showcase a wide variety of genres and subject matter.

More:Heartland's 2022 lineup includes 'The Whale,' 'My Policeman,' Louis Armstrong documentary

With that many films screening across seven theaters, the lineup can be a little daunting.

Here are a few recommendations to get you started, with the caveat that we have not yet had a chance to screen these films. These choices are based on conversations with Heartland organizers, the filmmakers involved and our own gut feelings as fans.

Writer-director Sarah Polley's adaptation of Miriam Toews' novel brings arguably the festival's biggest names along with it: producer Frances McDormand, who also co-stars in the film; executive producer Brad Pitt; stars Claire Foy and Rooney Mara.

It follows a group of women who meet to discuss a series of sexual assaults in their isolated Mennonite colony.

"Women Talking" debuted in September and has collected an 87% score through review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. It will make its Indiana debut at Heartland.

When to see it: "Women Talking" will debut in Theater 2 of the Kan-Kan Cinema at 7:15 p.m. Oct. 13.

Look, there is considerable worldwide interest in what Harry Styles ate for breakfast yesterday, let alone anything remotely to do with his music and film exploits. Putting that aside, "My Policeman" looks like it could stand on its own merits.

Based on Bethan Roberts' novel, it centers around the 1950s love affair of Tom (Styles) and Patrick (David Dawson) considerably complicated by laws against homosexuality and Tom's marriage to Marion (Emma Corrin). The trio meets 40 years later to discuss their intertwining lives.

When to see it: "My Policeman" will show at The Toby Theater in Newfields at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 13.

If crying over a robot tens of millions of miles away sounds like your idea of a good time, then "Good Night Oppy" may be for you.

The Amazon Studios-led documentary tells the story of Opportunity, a rover sent to Mars for a 90-minute mission who ended up living an additional 15 years. The family-friendly film is making its Indiana debut.

When to see it: "Good Night Oppy" will screen in Theater 1 of Living Room Theaters at 4:45 p.m. Oct. 16.

This one comes highly recommended from Heartland organizers. Creative director Greg Sorvig praised the film's young lead actors at the festival's launch event last month.

The French-language film follows the evolving relationship of 13-year-old boys Remi and Leo. It has already won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and it will be Belgium's entry for best international feature film at the upcoming Academy Awards.

When to see it: "Close" will show in Theater 2 of the Kan-Kan Cinema at 7:15 p.m. Tuesday.

Mamie Till Mobley's quest for justice after the lynching of her 14-year-old son, Emmett, in Mississippi is chronicled in this biopic, based of course on real events. The boy's 1955 murder was a catalyst for the American Civil Rights Movement.

More:Emmett Till exhibit at The Children's Museum contends with brutal, emotional history

Whoopi Goldberg produced and co-stars in the film, but it's the performance of star Danielle Deadwyler you'll want to keep an eye on. Variety and others have her pegged as an early Oscar contender.

When to see it: "Till" will screen in Landmark Glendale Theater 10 at 7:30 p.m. Monday.

Another adaptation of a novel lands on our list with "Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets," from the book of the same name by Evan Roskos.

The film follows a 16-year-old's search for his lost sister as he simultaneously finds love and attempts to overcome an anxiety disorder, all with the help of an imaginary pigeon therapist (voiced by Tom Wilkinson). It's your typical YA/coming-of-age/mystery/quirky dramedy with a talking bird. You know. The usual.

When to see it: "Dr. Bird's Advice for Sad Poets" is available to stream online. It will also play in Theater 1 of the Living Room Theaters at 7:15 p.m. Oct. 14 and Theater 2 at 12:15 p.m. Oct. 15.

In keeping with the surrealism, "The Lost King" tracks a history buff's quest to find the undiscovered remains of King Richard III of England. It is loosely based on the actual discovery of the monarch's body in 2012, more than 500 years after his death.

Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins stars, with co-star and screenwriter Steve Coogan. King Richard III, played by Harry Lloyd, appears throughout the film as the characters search for him.

When to see it: "The Lost King" will show at 7 p.m. Wednesday at The Toby Theater in Newfields.

The world of Pez collecting is way more high-stakes than you realized, as shown in the comedic spy-thriller documentary. Steve Glew brought dispensers from Eastern Europe to the U.S. that people werent able to obtain here. But that led to big problems with the man known as none other than The Pezident, who decided what arrived in the U.S. and what didnt.

When to see it: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at The Historic Artcraft Theater. 3 p.m. Oct. 15 at Deboest Lecture Hall at Newfields. 2:15 p.m. Oct. 16 at Living Room Theaters.

A couple from South Bend Jillian Speece and Nathaniel Hoff are at the heart of this documentary that chronicles their 50-state tour in a station wagon that already had 264,000 miles. Sensing the countrys division, the duo, who comprise the band The Bergamot, performed concerts and asked people to sign their car with messages of unity and empathy. The documentary shows the journey, with its setbacks and triumphs.

When to see it: Showings are scheduled for 7:15 p.m. Friday at The Toby Theater at Newfields and 1 p.m. Sunday at Living Room Theaters. Online streaming available via heartlandfilm.org through Oct. 16.

Wild and fun high school student Lola is known for throwing an annual birthday camping party with a scavenger hunt. After her untimely death, her best friends discover she has already hidden their gifts for that years trip. But the discovery leads to secrets they never knew about her. Their grief-filled journey to healing includes grappling with mental health and substance abuse. Executive producer Laura Palmer is from Carmel, and the film is inspired in part by the death of Director Jeffrey Crane Grahams teenage best friend.

When to see it: Showings at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Glendale Landmark Theater 10 and 5:30 p.m. Saturday at Deboest Lecture Hall at Newfields. Online streaming available via heartlandfilm.org through Oct. 16.

Academy Award nominee David Strathairn known for his work in Nomadland, Good Night, and Good Luck, and Lincoln stars in this stunning solo performance. In doing so, he introduces more people to Jan Karski, who survived the Blitzkrieg, risked his life for the Polish Underground and became among the first to speak the truth of the Nazis devastation to the Western allies.

When to see it: You can catch it at 7:45 p.m. Friday at Glendale Landmark Theater 12 and 7:15 p.m. Oct. 16 at Living Room Theaters. Online streaming available via heartlandfilm.org through Oct. 16.

In the 19th-century Hawaiian Kingdom, a man stands against a foreign invasion as the people deal with an outbreak of leprosy that forces some to live on a remote island. When Koolau and his son Kalei contract the disease, they refuse to be permanently separated from their family. It's based on a real-life story told by his wife Piilani.

When to see it: Showings are at 4:45 p.m. Saturday at Living Room Theaters and 5 p.m. Sunday at Glendale Landmark Theater 10. Online streaming available via heartlandfilm.org through Oct. 16.

In Kenyas Maasai homeland, 12 women became East Africa's first all-female anti-poaching unit. Instead of using military-style training, Virginia, Liz, Momina and Damaris spend a year releasing trauma and finding healing that changes them and their communities.

When to see it: See it at 6:15 p.m. Friday at Living Room Theaters and 12:30 p.m. Saturday at Glendale Landmark Theater 12. Online streaming available via heartlandfilm.org through Oct. 16.

The movie is based on the story of writer Roger Sharpe, whose pinball expertise and superb hand-eye coordination helped lift New York City's ban on the game in the 1970s. Add in a love story, and you've got more to add to the historical angle.

When to see it: Showings are scheduled for 7:45 p.m. Tuesday at Living Room Theaters, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at The Historic Artcraft Theater and 2:45 p.m. Oct. 15 at Glendale Landmark Theater 10. Online streaming available via heartlandfilm.org through Oct. 16.

Oscar-nominated documentarian Matthew Heinemans (Cartel Land) latest film looks at the final nine months of the United States 20-year war in Afghanistan.

It offers the on-the-ground perspectives of a U.S. special forces unit, an Afghan general and his soldiers and Afghan civilians attempting to flee the country as it succumbs to Taliban rule.

When to see it: Retrograde will show at 5:45 p.m. in Theater 1 of the Living Room Theaters.

Looking for things to do?Our newsletter has the best concerts, art, shows and more and the stories behind them

Rory Appleton is the pop culture reporter at IndyStar. Contact him at 317-552-9044 andrappleton@indystar.com, or follow him on Twitter at @RoryDoesPhonics.

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15 film recommendations for Indy's Heartland Film Festival - IndyStar

Queen Elizabeth IIs death has triggered a subdued reaction in Cyprus, where the British monarch is intertwined with the islands painful history of empire, independence and division.

For some Cypriots with long memories, she is the head of state blamed for signing off on the death warrants of freedom fighters against British colonial rule in the late 1950s.

Old wounds reappeared earlier this year during the Queens jubilee celebrations organised by the British military stationed on the island.

In June, a charity concert celebrating the queens platinum jubilee was toned down and relocated to a site within the British bases, after a small but vocal group charged that the event celebrated a killer queen.

The row stemmed from Elizabeth being head of state during the Cyprus independence struggle from British rule from 1955-1959, during which nine young EOKA fighters were executed.

She was a good queen but not for Cyprus She didnt sign to give a life (pardon) the boys fighting for Cyprus, for freedom, and they hung them, said Andreas, an 83-year-old pensioner, declining to give his surname.

But another Greek Cypriot encountered around the capitals busy Ledra Street was less dismissive.

Were sad and we feel sorrow about her death. We wish that the new king will be like her. Long live the king! said Alec Ioannou.

Cyprus has traditionally close ties with its former colonial ruler, but the past sometimes gets in the way.

Although Cyprus is also an active member of the Commonwealth, which the queen headed, she got a mixed reception when visiting in 1993.

Some Greek Cypriots jeered her during an October 1993 visit to Nicosia, the worlds last divided capital.

Royal observers say it was one of the queens worst receptions on her travels.

During her first and only visit to the island to attend a Commonwealth heads of government meeting, the queen was greeted by angry demonstrators and shouts of Go home.

But many Cypriots are also pro-British with a large diaspora community in the UK; many Cypriots choose Britain for higher education, and tourists from Britain are the islands largest source of visitors.

There is also a large British expat community that calls Cyprus home.

Prince Edward and Sophie celebrated the Queens jubilee during their first royal visit to Cyprus in June.

They received a warm reception on the island without a hint of dissent.

We offer our most sincere condolences for the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. At these difficult times, our thoughts are with the Royal Family and the people of the United Kingdom, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades posted on Twitter as the world united in mourning her death.

Cyprus marked 62 years since independence from Britain this year, but the small island remains divided and home to foreign bases and a UN peacekeeping force.

Another residue of discontent with Britain is that the country was a guarantor of the islands sovereignty under the treaty of independence, but the UK did not intervene to stop the 1974 Turkish invasion.

The Mediterranean island, now home to a combined population of about 1.2 million, has been a prized strategic possession for a succession of empires through the ages.

-Murder Mile

Modern history has divided it between a Greek-speaking south and a Turkish-speaking north.

Todays busy pedestrian thoroughfare behind the capitals ancient Venetian walls, Ledra Street, was known as the Murder Mile during the bloody Greek Cypriot guerrilla war against the British army.

The islands majority Greek Cypriot community had fought in 1955-1959 for Enosis, a long-yearned union with motherland Greece.

It finally accepted Britains offer of independence in 1960, conditional on London retaining sovereignty over two coastal bases before inter-communal bloodshed and Turkeys 1974 invasion of northern Cyprus.

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History mars ties between queen, ex-colony Cyprus - Breitbart

After observing Jupiter and revealing a unique set of rings going around it, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has trained its lenses towards Mars. The worlds most powerful observatory has captured its first images and spectra of Mars, which could help better understand churnings happening on the Red Planet.

The telescope, which is equipped to take science back in time and observe the changes and evolution that have shaped planetary objects over millennia, can help in revealing new insights into the planet's dust storms, weather patterns, seasonal changes, and the processes that occur at different times of Martian day.

The telescope joins orbiters and rovers in unraveling the secrets of Mars as humans look to set up colonies on the planet in the near future.

Also Read | Hubble captures spiral arms of a galaxy filled with young suns

The telescope in its first image captured the Red Planet using its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which shows a region of the planets eastern hemisphere at two different wavelengths. Nasa released the image with a surface reference map and the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) on the left, with the two Webb NIRCam instrument fields of view overlaid.

Left: Reference map of the observed hemisphere of Mars from Nasa and the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA). Top right: NIRCam image showing 2.1-micron (F212 filter) reflected sunlight, revealing surface features such as craters and dust layers. Bottom right: Simultaneous NIRCam image showing ~4.3-micron (F430M filter) emitted light that reveals temperature differences with latitude and time of day. (Photo: Nasa)

The image captured by the NIRCam reveals surface details similar to those apparent in visible-light images. The image shows the rings of the Huygens Crater, the dark volcanic rock of Syrtis Major, and the brightening in the Hellas Basin are all apparent in this image.

Also Read | China unveils Mars mission results, rover travels 1.9 kms on Red Planet

Meanwhile, the NIRCam image captured at a longer wavelength shows off the light given off by the planet as it loses heat. "The brightest region on the planet is where the Sun is nearly overhead, because it is generally warmest. The brightness decreases towards the polar regions, which receive less sunlight, and less light is emitted from the cooler northern hemisphere, which is experiencing winter at this time of year," Nasa said in a release with the image.

Located nearly 1,50,000 kilometers away from Earth, the James Webb telescope is equipped to see light coming from the edge of time. However, Mars is the closest planet to the spacecraft, which adds to new challenges in observing it. The location provides a view of Mars observable disk, which is the portion of the sunlit side that is facing the telescope.

Since Mars is closest to the observatory, the Red Planet is one of the brightest objects in the night sky in terms of both visible light (which human eyes can see) and infrared light. This adds to the difficulty since the observatory was built to detect the extremely faint light of the most distant galaxies in the universe.

To see Mars, the Webb team had to adjust for Mars extreme brightness by using very short exposures, measuring only some of the light that hit the detectors, and applying special data analysis techniques.

Also Read | Jupiter to be closest to Earth in 70 years on this date

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Mars looks blinding as Webb telescope zooms in on Red Planet for the first time - India Today